Friday, February 17, 2012

Opening thoughts about ARRL CW contest

Before you knew it 00:00 came and the ARRL international CW contest was a go. During my first 1/2 hour 20m was open but only to non DX to me. So it was off to 40m's and it was alive and hopping! Here at VE3WDM the contest power is 5 watts or less. The band was crowed and the pileups long I did give a few DX stations a call but the KW powered stations going back to the DX really gave me no chance. I did hang in for the whole 1/2 hour but it was just not happening to night. I shut the rig down for the evening just to crazy out there, once the contest adrenaline cools I will get back on. I am looking at Saturday to give 10m, 15m and 20m a go for some DX soup.
Until then....contest on!!

6 comments:

Larry W2LJ said...

Same here Mike! After a day at work, my brain's not ready to deal with 40 WPM, anyway. Tomorrow should be better. Good luck!

Larry W2LJ

VE9KK said...

Good luck to you as well Larry!

Casey Bahr said...

Look for me on 40M tonight. I've set the CQ to 24 WPM and am glad to slow down and chase the weak ones (when I can hear them). GL!

Bert, PA1B said...

Hello Mike,
I had limited time today, but with a maximum power of 2.7 W from my FT817, I made 9 QSO with North America, which are all good for more than 1000 MPW. hi
73, Bert

VE9KK said...

Good evening Casey, I was on 40 until 8pm local time as I was getting tired but I did contact TI5w...do you know them?? Hope to catch you on Sunday.

VE9KK said...

Hello Bert, I had great luck on 15 meters today with 500mW's. I was making many contact but for some reason 20m was just not doing it I had to raise the power to 5 watts to get any contacts.